HERE COMES THE NAVY (1934)

Typical Warners film of the era; the plotline may have been original back then, but now it feels full of cliches and stale stereotypes. James Cagney is Chesty O'Connor, a scrappy ironworker who delights in taunting the Navy men who work nearby, particularly Pat O'Brien. Their antagonistic relationship blows up at an ironworkers' party where O'Brien steals Cagney's girl (Dorothy Tree) and wins a fist fight. Cagney decides to join the Navy to get back at O'Brien; in the meantime, he starts dating O'Brien's sister (Gloria Stuart, the older Rose in TITANIC), and when they get serious, O'Brien tries to lay down the law. Cagney manages to piss off all the Navy men with his cocky, anti-authoritarian patter, but he comes through for his fellow sailors during a fire on board a ship, the Arizona (the same ship that, in real life, was sunk at Pearl Harbor). Later, he even saves O'Brien's life when both of them wind up hanging from an airborne dirigible. They develop mutual respect, if not friendship. Frank McHugh plays Cagney's buddy Droopy; a running gag involves Droopy's mom's false teeth and her ability to sing. The Cagney/Stuart relationship is not fleshed out very well; it's difficult to see what someone of her relative refinement sees in Cagney's rudeness and tough demeanor. The friendship between Cagney and McHugh is the most heartfelt thing in the movie; there's no homoerotic charge between them, though at one point, a sailor yells at them, "Swish!! What are you two, a couple of violets?" Recommended mostly for fans of Cagney, or fans of the military-buddies-at-peacetime film, if that is indeed a separate genre.